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Is soccer about to explode?

TIDE-HSV

TIDE-HSV

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bilbo said:
No, soccer will not "explode" in the US. It will however continue to get extremely popular. As many have mentioned, the MLS has learned from past league's mistakes (salary cap, the MLS actually owns every team, soccer specific stadiums) and is slowly expanding into markets (Atlanta, Miami) that have large ethnic populations. Teams such as Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake, Kansas City, Philadelphia, etc have large fan support groups. The American Outlaws grew out of this to support the USMNT and they now have over 130+ chapters across the US. You can now watch just about every game from every major league (Premier league, la liga, etc) and millennials love it. One of the biggest hurtles soccer in the US faces is nuturing home grown talent. Klingsmann has made it his mission to put into place the European system where you start nuturing kids young and have the MLS teams have academies to develop those kids. Once that starts to bear fruit (10-20 years) and the MLS starts to pay a competitive wage compared to other sports, the US could be quite competitive.
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What Klinsmann is after is an alternative to the American educational system. In Europe, there's a long tradition of diverting only kids who can pass an exhaustive exam to the gymnasium>universitaet path. All others are channeled into vocational schools. The soccer schools are just like the other vocational schools. You train basically to be a pro athlete. To me, it always seemed risky for the soccer, tennis, etc. kids. It's a lot easier to suffer an injury which would wipe out a pro athletic career, as opposed to ruining a career as a plumber, electrician, etc. Their craftsman professions, like the two I mentioned, are much better trained than ours are here - and better paid, which adds to the cost of living over there. Anyway, they make no pretense of sending and supporting kids who don't belong in high school, college, etc., when they're really only wanting a pro athletic career. In a lot of ways, their system makes more sense...
 
BradtheImpaler

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I think that the academy system that MLS is trying to implement will have an educational component as well, and if I'm not mistaken, the Adidas program has college funds involved.
 
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chanson78

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With parents hearing about the evils of football regarding concussions and how kids get hurt every other play (things I have heard about football, not my own preference) the number of parents who want their kids to get involved in sports will likely start allowing them to play soccer instead of football. When I was growing up my parents wouldn't let me play football, and soccer was the alternative I chose. Two broken noses, a busted PCL and I can tell you that soccer isn't exactly all pillow fights and marshmallows.

I think this is the reason you find so many young folks liking soccer, they remember playing themselves and can reminisce about their times playing when they watch the stars.

The NFL has had to make some significant changes to try and rehabilitate its image as a violent sport that leaves bodies littered on the field. It will continue to evolve in an attempt to become safer for the players. Whether that evolved product will still have the loyalty that it once did remains to be seen.
 
ValuJet

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chanson78 said:
With parents hearing about the evils of football regarding concussions and how kids get hurt every other play (things I have heard about football, not my own preference) the number of parents who want their kids to get involved in sports will likely start allowing them to play soccer instead of football.
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This is probably silly, but I'll share it any way. My daughter played soccer in a church youth program from the ages 10-12. Her last year playing, her team had a hot shot kid who was a ball hog but was a scoring machine. They lost one game the entire season and that was the game this kid was out of town. One game they won by a score of 10-1 and Alex had nine of the goals. Their last game of the season, Alex had a free kick from the sideline right in front of where I was sitting. A kid was about ten yards between Alex and the net thingey. Alex kicked the ball as hard as he could and it hit the opposing player right square in his gonads. The kid dropped to the round like a dead duck. It was sort of surreal that a bunch of church people were giggling at an injured kid - especially that kind of injury. I felt bad for him; he was on the sidelines on his knees for 15 of 20 minutes. I've been slammed there once or twice playing basketball, baseball, whatever and I felt like throwing up until the pain went away.

I was reminded of a baseball coach of mine years ago when our team's catcher got racked and he wasn't wearing a cup. The coach yelled out "Oh well, there goes his Father's Day."
 
GreatDanish

GreatDanish

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This thread has made me want to follow bowling.
Lots of scoring. Little injury risk. And, the season never ends. Or, at least it shouldn't.

I'm going to start trying to find which bowler I should become a fan of. Hopefully ESPN will up their bowling coverage.
 
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